THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

TALKS BY PROFESSOR SHLOMO SAND,DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF TEL AVIV,ON HIS NEWLY TRANSLATED BOOK,THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE This may be the most important and surprising book on Zionism, Israel and Judaism written in the last fifty years. Nothing in the Middle East looks the same after reading it.

Shlomo Sand is a much published professor in the Dept. of History at TelAviv University specializing in the history of ideas. His most recent book is THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. It is an extremely scholarly, very original, and often shocking work - the title is meant literally - with profound implications for Zionism and the ongoing conflict between Israel and its neighbors. I can't recall when last I - Bertell - learned so much about both nationalism and Zionism from any book. It was a bestseller and caused a huge scandal when it appeared a couple of years ago in Israel and another scandal when the French edition appeared last year. Sand will be in the U.S. for a week promoting the English edition of the book. For more, see reviews and interviews in English at http//inventionofthejewishpeople.com/. Sand argues, among other things:. Few modern conflicts are as attached to ancient history as that of Israel and Palestine. Shlomo Sand's measured and analytical research intothe biblical origin of the Jewish people-their slavery, two exiles and(continuing) journey to the Promised Land-finds no record of any Jewish exile. Sand's explosive and inescapable conclusion is that without exile, there is noright to return. . Sand's investigation uncovers a false historiography based on surviving fragments of Jewish and Christian religious memory. He finds early Rabbis and 19th century Zionist Scholars responsible for the construction ofa continuous genealogy for the Jewish people. Israel, states Shlomo, has deliberately forgotten its history, and replaced it with a myth. "Thedisparity between what my research suggested about the history of the Jewish people and the way that history is commonly understood- not only within Israel but in the larger world-shocked me as much as it shocked my readers" he writes in the book's preface. . Sand's research attributes the Jewish diaspora to early Judaist evangelism across North Africa, Southern Europe and the Middle East, not a biological lineage. The biblical narrative of Jewish exile and enforceddispersal already discredited, Sand finds present-day Palestinian Arabs to be the true heirs of the biblical Jews.